When you leave you must remember to come back for the others. A circle, understand? You will always be Esperanza. You will always be Mango Street. You can’t erase what you know. You can’t forget who you are. – Sandra Cisneros

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journey

I am not sitting on a beach watching the waves pound shell and rock into sand. I am not sipping exotic drinks on a veranda. I am in between — in the mountains, overlooking rice paddies and watching six men building the second floor of a house propped up by a million sticks of bamboo. The construction here is quiet, not like Kuala Lumpur where it mixes in with the roar of traffic. Here, there is the gentle tap tap of a hammer drifting across the valley and over the river rushing down from the mountain.

Trekking to the temple

This morning after the meditation, Kurta, my guide and I trekked to a Hindu Temple high on a mountain across from the Nirarta Wellness Center. The plan had been to cross the river in front of my cottage, but it was too high, so we took to the road and crossed a broken bridge instead. The air was damp and fresh from the night rain, and the path was slimy with moss spread over muddy concrete.

Ten tiers to reach enlightenment

I couldn’t help thinking for most of the trek up to the temple, how the hell am I going to make it down this path. We reached the temple after climbing the last “300 steps.” Not a tourist in sight, just Kurta and me. I put on my sarong and wandered about the ancient temple. It was waiting for the festival of the full moon, quiet and empty. A thin layer of slippery mud covered the floor. Wooden structures waiting for offerings surrounded two platforms, and the multi-tiered tower shrine called the pelinggih meru overlooks the valley.

Dreaded descent

The 300 steps – the 10 that I slid down

Then the dreaded descent began. I tried to breathe into my fear of falling as I took the first 200 steps down toward the trail. My feet flew out from under me and sent me bouncing down the next ten steps. Bruised, but not hurt, I held back my tears, which seem to rest on the verge of everything these days. They are always there, simmering, but I keep them at bay most of the time. After my fall, I thought about bravery. Are brave people cowards running away from what scares them? Is it easier to face a dragon than it is to settle with your demons?

Maybe some of those answers are hidden in the temple on the mountain. There is a dual deity up there — part monster head with a dragon body. Is this the universal demon I carry?

Bali part monster

Crossing the River

Kurta and I took a less slippery way down toward the river. Kurta pasted a Band-Aid on my superficial wound and pointed out a brilliant green rice paddy ready for picking. He suggested we try crossing the river. He must have sensed my adventurous spirit. We meandered through the rice paddies to find the best place to cross the raging river. Even I had my doubts, but I was thinking of how the cold water would feel on my bruised body as I followed Kurta into the river. It was uncrossable there, so we forged upstream but could not find a place that wouldn’t swallow us in our pursuit. We bushwhacked along the river, made a small crossing and eventually found the road.

Finding the road

In between

Today, I am sitting on a four-poster bed by a river in the middle of this paradise surrounded by tropical plants and birds-of-paradise. Honey, the dog, barks in the distance, a group of Chinese women on retreat chatter in the background and every once in a while, a cool breeze drifts over my sweaty body. I am in between all of this before I start the next leg of my journey.

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Finding Loke Yew

It is my third weekend teaching at the Myanmar Refugee School. Every time I go there the Uber driver and I bond in our collaborative search for the place.

The one other volunteer and I decided that the reason no one shows up to volunteer at the Loke Yew School is that it is impossible to find. My new Uber friend and I confirmed that the address that I have for the place doesn’t exist. However, he gave me a famous KL land mark – the Hung Kee Noodle Shop. Between that discovery and the confirmation that the address is wrong, I should find the place next week. Besides, the other volunteer and I found a nearby LRT (Light Rapid Transit) station.

Anything you want

When I arrived at the school – late – the students were sitting at benches, not on them, waiting for me. It was as if my arrival was a signal for them to go wild.

Waiting for me?

What are they doing? I ask the woman in charge.

Waiting for you.

Oh. What should they work on?

Anything you want. Then she disappeared.

HMMM. Well, there were pictures of clothing on the board, so why not sing a song about clothes? I rounded them into a circle. A simple task if I didn’t have to pry them apart and keep them from slugging each other. We sat down, and I started to sing the What are you Wearing song faster and faster as I started losing their attention. If you are wearing a blue dress, stand up if you’re wearing a blue dress, stand up. Everyone, except for the two girls wearing blue dresses, stood up, and it was downhill from there. Children spilled everywhere. But I think they liked my voice.

Teaching strength

Teaching little kids is different than teaching teenagers, especially when there are so many of them. It’s hard to tell if they are unruly or if they don’t know enough English to follow my directions. The perk to teaching little ones is that you can pick them up when the chips are down. This particular bunch likes to punch each other – hard. Sometimes I hear a loud crack or look up to see a kid pressed to the floor in a head lock. It takes all of my strength to pry them apart.

Can you tell them?

Then the woman in charge, the only one who speaks Burmese and English, drifted back into the room. Please, can you tell them to sit down and get out their notebooks? I begged. She told them. For the first time in the lesson, they all knew what to do. Then I realized that they didn’t have anything to write with, so I added before the Burmese speaker disappeared, can you tell them they need pencils?

The children sat for a moment, and since one boy had a hat, I went with that. Who is wearing a hat? He smiled. Another kid wrestled him for it, and all hell broke loose again. So, I grabbed all five of the dry erase markers, mere nubs of markers, and said, who wants a marker? There was a mad rush at me. No, I shook my head, down, down, as if I was staving off a pack of puppies. They finally realized that they had to sit to get something from me.

Where is the Cat in the Hat?

Boy at Myanmar Refugee school

After much gesticulating, one boy understood that I wanted them to write hat. H-A-T. Hat. Then another student followed suit, and I poured a gallon of attention over them practically doing cartwheels. I patted their heads and smiled and jumped for joy, thus inspiring a few others to write the magic three letter. Where is the Cat in the Hat when you need him? Finally, we had all the three-letter A-T words I could think of on the board. Most of the kids busied themselves with coloring and hitting each other, but I got a few to write, and some to draw cats and hats. I held off the others from an all-out dry erase marker assault as the privileged five pressed the remaining ink out of them and onto recycled paper. By the end of the lesson, I had some of them writing words horizontally to make sentences: That fat cat. That cat sat.

They were done. They drifted. They wallowed. They wrestled and punched each other some more. It was mayhem.

Finding books

I made my way through the other volunteer’s room to find a stash of books. The other volunteer had as much control over his students as I did, but they were older. I left the most unruly boy from my classroom with him, just for a reprieve, and scooted back to the wrestling match/coloring fest in my room.

Who wants a book? There was another mad rush. These kids know what they want. They are wanters. There was a clamor for the books. There were more than enough to go around.

The House was Quiet

Then all of them settled. A calm settled over the room. There was an occasional tug at a book, or a nudge to find a comfortable spot, a competition to have more books. ALL of them were engaged.

They came to me and showed me fish, and babies, and boys, and hair, lions, tigers, bears, and Buzz Lightyear. They asked me to sit in Burmese, and I taught them to say sit in English. They said grrr, and I said lion. They devoured the books. They fought over them too, and we learned how to share.

Sharing at Myanmar Refugee School KL Malaysia

The unruly boy, the one I had stuck in the other classroom earlier, wandered back to join us. He was the most aggressive and disengaged student there. I scooped him up and hugged him into my lap with all the loving I could muster. We read book after book, and he couldn’t get enough, even when his friends tried to fight him, even when the little girl on my other knee roared when she saw the witch in Rapunzel. When he pointed to the scary shark in Finding Nemo, we roared, and we tickled, and we laughed.

. . . and the world was calm

. . . and the world was calm*

Every once in a while, I felt a little head pressing against my back or leaning on my shoulder, or playing with my hair. They couldn’t get enough of me, and I couldn’t get enough of them.

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Heading Northwest

On Saturday I found myself in a car with two other women heading northwest. As usual, I had no idea where we were going until we were well on our way to Bukit Tabur. I have been there before. It’s a stunning ridge only 45 minutes from the Kuala Lumpur.

The other side

The other side of Bukit Tabur, which I had climbed before, had closed within a month of my visit there because someone fell to his death. Bukit Tabur is a climb where I had to ignore the possibility that I could drop off a sheer rock face at any moment — one of those climbs with thick frayed ropes that provided dubious support –thick frayed ropes tied to saplings, as sturdy, inexperienced hikers trusted them not to break.

And these people climbing had probably signed up for the hike without any expectation just as I had this day. Their friend had told them it was beautiful, or they saw a picture, or, if they were like me, they had to meet their weekly social quota (I spend an inordinate amount of time alone – almost hermit status). Whatever the reason, I was on my way to Bukit Tabur a second time with a woman who spoke Malaysian English of which I understood one in five words and a Korean woman who had hiked once before in her lifetime.

Most of the time. . . but sometimes

Following the leader up Bukit Tabur

The gist is that I love beautiful places like this. I love adventure. I love not knowing where I am going – most of the time. But sometimes the not knowing about my future is a constant test — a situation that I put myself in because I want to rewire my brain.

SJ is one of the many people on my walkabout I will never forget. She has hiked twice in her life. Fearless and Full of Joy.

At some point in my life, a story formed inside me telling me I had to be brave. I was the one who would slay dragons, leap tall buildings at a single bound, and conquer the world. I was the one who would do it all, and I only had a short lifetime to accomplish all of this.

A proclamation

Climbing the crag at Bukit Tabur

The fact of the matter is that I don’t want to scale craggy cliffs with only frayed ropes dangling from strained saplings growing out of rock. This proclamation goes beyond the fear that this kind of climbing invokes. It surpasses the view that I see when I get to the top. It exceeds the missing exhilaration that I should feel because I accomplished something great and dangerous. It terrifies me at the same time that is pushes me to face my fears.

This Saturday, after we had scaled and descended a craggy, frayed-rope, sapling-anchored rock, I followed our leader as she continued down the trail. I was pretty sure that the rest of the day was going to be a continuation of stomach wrenching climbs.

So I said no. . .

So, I said no. No rocks, just woods, and jungle.

Turning back

Our leader started to take us back to the car. Since we were only an hour into our climb, I think that her plan was to take us somewhere else. Then it dawned on her that we could just continue through the jungle until we came to the next challenge and then turn around and come back. So that is what we did.

It was the most beautiful jungle hike, with such lovely company, flora and fauna lit by streaming paths of light, snack breaks along the way, and joyful conversation. When we got to the next rock face, which really wasn’t so bad, my friend SJ, whose legs were quaking with fatigue, said no this time. And we turned around.

The rest of the hike was beautiful.

Turning forward

When you journey as much as I have, you learn that you can always turn around, and when you do, the return route never looks the same. You may have even had a chance to leap a tall cliff at a single bound or slay a fear dragon. When I turned around that day, it was so simple, smooth and accepting.

Soon I will turn around as I always do when I hop on a plane and return “home” for a period. But I am not necessarily turning back. I am turning forward. Forward with new eyes.

Turning Forward

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Ask me

People like to compare places. Would you say that India is like Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Mexico, the U.S.? How does one compare India to anything? India is India. Ask me a question that lets me pour some of India into your soul. Ask me about the contrasts of color, people, nature, plastic and poverty, but don’t ask me to compare.

Ask me about the woman on her way to Sri Lanka who would “never go to India; where men grab at the women and rob them blind. Where danger lurks behind every corner.” How do people get through life thinking that way? I forget that some people think I am a brave and gallant traveler who hopped on a plane to Mexico three years ago to find “home” but has yet to return to the comforts of New England. I am not brave, spirited yes, but I associate bravery with gallantry, valor, and nerve, not with the hapless delving into other worlds that I do.

A different approach

Delving was not my approach to this trip to India. The man with whom I went to the Everest Base Camp (not to be confused with summiting Mt. Everest) encouraged me several times to join the Happy Hiker India trip. At first, I was reluctant, I am not a group person, as Ganesan would be the first to point out. It turns me inside out to be in a group. After three or four pushes from Ganesan, I relented and joined the 27-member tour of Southern India. Since it was with the Happy Hikers, I trusted it would be something that it didn’t turn out to be, but that doesn’t mean that it was not a splendid experience. Despite the fact that the cluster of women on the trip whose priority was shopping drove the trip, I managed, as usual, to hop off the bus and explore the nooks and crannies of India, while others pursued their interests.

Mudumalai National Park

We bounced about in a government jeep early one morning. The forest shared the blue hue so familiar to me from new England hikes in the winter minus the cold. The shopping women in the back were so loud that the driver had to remind them that we were scaring the animals away.

As we inched through the forest sanctuary, part of me yearned to be walking in this emptiness, but I appreciated that I could be there at all. Although I get down on India’s lack of infrastructure when it comes to hiding the trash as well as we Americans do, India’s efforts to preserve the wildlife there touched me. My thoughts were rewarded when we saw an elephant taking its morning drink in a shallow pond at the base of a ravine. Seeing an elephant in the wild is an honor, and on this trip, I was granted that honor several times. This elephant was undisturbed, peaceful, and graceful. The scene was so still, and I could imagine this animal’s solitary life as he swayed out of the pond and into the manicured landscape, which reminded me of the woods I used to tromp through growing up in New York.

Elephants in India

All of the elephants that I have seen up until now have been captive. Hindus revere Ganesh, the elephant god who removes obstacles and carries the attributes of strength, honor, stability and tenacity. Most of the captive elephants that I have seen lumber through India’s crazy streets carrying barefoot men or stay chained by one leg to a post at the bottom of a temple’s 700 steps eating bananas or wads of rice shoved into their mouths by their owners.

On my trip to Northern India last year, Dolores and I rode two elephants who had been rescued from the circus. The story went something like this. Years ago, royalty owned a herd of elephants. A caste cared for the elephants from generation to generation. But when the dynasty dissolved, the elephants were sold into labor and circus acts where their keepers brutally abused them until someone called a halt to elephants in the circus. When the elephants were released, there was no question that they return to the next generation of royal elephant keepers.

A Cultural Safari

After the morning safari, three of us we took off from our place on the edge of the reserve to walk into the town of Masinagudi. We passed by washerwomen and fishermen at the riverbank and never-ending piles of plastic that continue to swallow India.

Hope your road is a long one.

May there be many summer mornings when,

with what pleasure, what joy,

you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time;

may you stop at Phoenician trading stations

to buy fine things,

mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,

sensual perfume of every kind—

as many sensual perfumes as you can;

and may you visit many Egyptian cities

to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Masinagudi’s small main street had its version of “pearls, corals, ebony and sensual perfumes” with its goat’s heads at the butcher shop gazing beyond the long line of chicken butchers on the other side of the street. Women in bright saris women waited in line while the butcher pulled one live chicken after the other from its cage and de-limbed it on a runny red slab of wood. Men carried away livers and legs, but the women stuffed the live chickens in their bags for later execution.

We wandered up a hill off of the main drag of the town to find India in its vibrant pink, purple, turquoise, and striking white houses, amidst white-toothed children as curious about us as we were of them. We bought a bunch of bananas and discovered that cows, dogs, monkeys, and birds eat them skin and all.

Seeing women in their brilliant saris, the men in their lungi and the openness of the poverty that surrounds them baffles me. Living this way, and smells that curl my nostril hairs is understandable on a certain level. This is their normal. It is the contrast that astounds me: the brilliance of the people, their clothing, and their smiles. I am the anomaly for them, wandering through their village with my Samsung while the men, women, and children stare at my long, white, uncovered limbs and titter behind polite hands.

Hiding Poverty in America

India doesn’t hide its poverty and its pollution the way that Americans do. I know we have the same amount of plastic, maybe less poverty, but it’s still there hiding behind the dumpsters, or in those secret landfills where They take our non-recyclables and nuclear waste. We Americans just take better care to filter it, which has its merits. Our infrastructure provides our country with a means to deposit its waste, finish its roads, and clean its public toilets, but that is not to say that it doesn’t exist.

The rawness and honesty in India give me a realistic sense of the state of the world. India opens my eyes wide open to humanity, which is glorious and colorful, wretched and raw. India is loud and chaotic, soft and spiritual, ancient and wise.

The Tea Nest

We non-shoppers left the Tea Nest in Conoor reluctantly after a peaceful night on a tea plantation. We had spent the short evening before meandering through the tea plantation as the sun set. We twisted our way through the paths that the tea pickers make as they pluck one ripe tea leaf after the next and deposit them into their white burlap bags. We came upon a group of pickers – all women – weighing their day’s labor. Then they broke camp and left where they would start again in the morning.

We continued upward until we reached the top of the endless rows of tea, and bought tea and eucalyptus oil at a tea stand on the roadside. Meanwhile, I had to spend this time finding discrete places to take care of my India belly. Indian food is rich and eating it night after night takes its toll. I learned that sticking to veggie fried rice has its merits.

Despite my stomach, wandering back through the tea plantation we came upon several bisons on our path. We were not quite sure how they would feel about us, so we dodged them by taking a narrow path to the road where we met up with another bison. These animals are giants with threatening horns, but they seem more concerned with the grass on the roadside than they did with us. Two schoolboys returning home seemed relaxed enough about the bison, so we let it lumber past without consequence.

All the places I will go

As I strongly consider leaving Asia this June, I can’t believe how unaware I was of how other people live, how ignorant and shallow my perspective of the world was before I came here. Raised in an isolated and privileged world of country clubs and private schools, the closest I got to India was through Burnett, Kipling, and later, E.M. Forester. I, like these British authors, was captivated by India. Now their influence is buried behind the mask of what India truly is. Shrouded in the myths of religion and the past, poverty, food and color, India is a sensory experience that hopefully will stay with me if I return to New England.

Since I left Mexico, my adventures have taken on a different flavor and mood. I am not charging forth as much. Instead, I am absorbing the world in a way that I never have before. India has left me full of wonder for a second time.

I think of all of the places that I have not been – the Middle East, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South America, Africa, and the bits and pieces that I have missed on my travels—knowing that I have only scratched the surface of the world.

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Being an expatriate is my normal.

I have a feeling that I have always been one, even in my own country. It is my normal to feel like a foreigner. Being an American in Asia or Mexico makes my foreignness more obvious, because of the language and the color of my skin. Living in New England makes it easy to hide the foreigner in me.

How small is America?

Living and traveling in Southeast Asia, makes me realize how small America is. While you, we, are grappling with the election of our new president (He Who Shall Not Be Named), he is a passing fancy here. Here in Malaysia, America is no big deal. When locals ask me where I live, I usually say on the New York side or the opposite side from California. Sometimes, I just say I live near Canada. Most of the time people just cannot imagine where that might be.

I’ll admit that as an American I always felt privileged, maybe a step above the rest of the world. Living among expatriates in Kuala Lumpur has made me realize that I am not. Nor am I the center of the universe, which may seem obvious to you, but it took me a while to realize that.

Missing

Still, I find myself missing my country. The regularity of starting my car on a cold winter day. Wondering whether I will make it out of the driveway if I get enough traction as I charge our of the garage full bore. I miss going to Twelve Pine for a latte. I miss crashing around the woods with Beth. I miss lunch at Plowshare Farm. I miss clipping on my cross country skis and skiing out of my basement door in a raging snowstorm.

Do I want to come back?

I miss the normalcy of my New England life. The question is can I sustain the personal and emotional growth that I have gained in the past two and a half years, or would I slither back into my old skin again.

Do I want to come back?

Yes. I want to come back and live in a room with a kitchen, a bed, and a bathroom. I want to live in the woods, off the grid and write.

Can I come back?

I certainly have taken risks before. I am capable of doing anything. But I’ll need a car. I’ll need to pay first and last month’s rent. Oh and I’ll need a job. Isn’t it funny how leaving the country was so easy, so dynamic, unpredictable and challenging, but grappling with a possible return stops me dead in my tracks? All of my protectors leap out at me and yell be careful, it’s not the way you think it is, you will fall into a rut again, you can’t teach, you can’t earn a living writing, you will end up right where you started two and a half years ago. But I can keep them at bay. I have taken to propping those voices on my shoulder and telling them to settle down and watch me take care of myself.

Plant the oar

I finally get it when Tiresias gives Odysseus the oar and tells him that after he returns to Ithaka he will have to go somewhere far away and plant the oar in a place where no one has ever seen one before. It’s because Odysseus is not that person anymore. He made it back to Ithaka a different man, and Ithaka was not the same either. Plant the oar, plant your old self somewhere far away and your return will be complete.

So I can go back. I can take my oar with me. And after I have settled into my life there, I can pick up my oar and take it to say, Louisiana or Kansas, and plant it there. Because home is in my heart. I know that it is not in Peterborough, Katonah, or Kuala Lumpur.

It sounds so simple.

Why is it so hard?

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Tuesday, October 3 (Tengboche)

Rhododendron Forest

The trail started in a rhododendron forest. It continued through pine forests down, down, down to the Dudh Kosi River. We crossed the river on another suspension bridge swaying to the rhythm of the wind. Lunch was in a small paddock/café.

Yaks and horses wandered through the village with or without burdens to bear. People from all over the world floated by – spirits of adventure from Dana Hall, Harvard, Nepal, Iran, Seattle, France, the UK, Belgium, Australia and mostly Germany. I shared a way too salty ball of Yak cheese with an Iranian man and promptly chucked the remains of it down the cliff when he wasn’t looking. We were all hearty souls on the same path.

The porters can carry up to 80 kilos – burdens that weigh far more than they do. They trek in anything from crocs and flip flops to worn out sneakers and hiking shoes. Their dark brown feet are black around the edges, cracked and hardened by miles of treading this path to Everest. It reminds me of a grand pilgrimage.

Stately Men

The yak is a stately man. He looks outwards from each eye. His horns curl upward and back non-threateningly. His hooves splay with each step it takes on the hard rock. His shepherds threaten a beating with a light rope that never strikes. They drive their yaks with their voices and the yaks listen. People move aside as a team of yaks pushes up a mountain at the same delicate pace. They walk together through the street – splayed feet and eyes—not seeing but feeling the steps below them. Bells crafted for making music swing beneath their necks from far away at night.

4,000 Meter Break at the Shomare Hilltop Lodge – October 4

The silence is complete with only the soft sizzling of our lunch over a yak dung fire. The woman running this lodge is the widow of a Sherpa who died when so many others did in 1996. My silence is inspired by the awe that I hold for this land. We all agree that if I take off my shoes, the smell will ruin the perfection of this quiet rest, so I park them outside to wait for me there.

The tourists who did not make it to Everest Base Camp

One half a million people make the pilgrimage to Everest Base Camp every year. Chinese tourists with tripods and selfie sticks busy themselves and their photographic impressions and Facebook status. Meanwhile, they are surrounded by a thundering river, its waves sucked under and over under and over, carving its way from Mt. Everest and Island Peak.

A Nepalese man sings a song with a broad smile. The sun gives way to fog and the tree line disappears outside of the rhododendron forest where strings of moss hang lazily from bloomless, yellow-leaved branches.

View from the Rhododendron forest

The pressure in my ears tightens as we climb higher and I carry a dull headache with me for the remainder of the trip, especially at night when my brain, craving oxygen, pulses to the point of pushing me to pray, which is not something I do, but the repetition of the serenity prayer soothes the blood path and diverts my attention elsewhere. At this point, we are inching up the trail in a shuffle.

Yak dung patties

Yaks mew in unison with the bells clanging beneath their necks. Stacks of white rock dropped by the glacier splatter the landscape. Tidy rock walls contain the yaks who do not have the luxury of grazing that day. The yak pens are clear of their dung, which is collected and dried by women wearing yellow rubber gloves. They slap the dung into patties for burning or plugging holes in their stone structures to keep the wind out.

Is living on the subsistence level a hardship, or do we who have everything look down on a good life that has less?

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I saw a dead man today. We had just come out of the jungle and there he lay. The EMTs had just arrived, although we learned later that he had been lying there for 25 minutes. They performing CPR, but it was obvious that he was gone. He had beautiful hair and rich bronze skin. His shoes were cast off and his knee was bloodied and bruised from where he fell. He was alone. No one seemed to know him, but everyone wanted to save him. A small group of hikers took turns performing CPR as a woman counted out 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10 up to 30 over and over again.

Why do I start my blog with this (other than to draw you in with a good hook)? Because this is day one of the third year of my two-year walkabout. (Figure that one out.) When I left Peterborough, my plan was to return in two years, but I am not ready yet. The man who died reminded me of that today. One day you’re here and the next day you’re not. A snap of the fingers and life disappears. I am out here in the world because I want to do, see, feel, touch, and hear everything that I possibly can while I can. Nothing can determine my fate, so I want to live my life with abandon. I want to keep all of my doors wide open. By leaving the door open, I ended up in Malaysia a year ago today. By leaving the door open, I am learning a new career, meeting people, exploring. To coin a cliché the world is my classroom. It always has been.

What have I learned from the two years of my walkabout? Here are 10 things, not in any particular order.

Environmentally, we are screwed.

Worrying about the future is a waste of time.

Learning is a challenge, but I don’t need to be defensive as I do it.

Learning takes time.

Language barriers and cultural barriers are married to each other.

As much as I want to be one, I will never be a princess.

When you turn challenges into adventures, they are lots of fun.

I want to be a writer.

Ultimately, I am on my own.

I raised my children well.

In her own way, my mother lived her life with abandon. I think of her often as I tromp through the jungle, board a plane, speak a new language, read a poem, climb the world’s mountains. I think of her scraping her shins, falling down, and getting back up again day after day, mountain after mountain, trail after trail. She was 30 years older than me. Her death reminded me of my mortality. It nudged me to see the world before the great sights vanish, or before I am too old and creaky to venture forth.

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Do I sit in envy on this porch wondering why I never applied myself enough to have this? A house with a porch, a field, two cars, and barns full of equipment waiting for my next adventure. For a moment yes.

The morning breeze reminds me of the breeze off of Alford Lake at camp in Union, Maine. It used to sweep over the lake, through the balsams, and around the shiny heads glistening under the pines. It was as if it knew that it was time for church, which took place under the pines every Sunday after we washed our hair with biodegradable soap in the lake. The breeze didn’t whisper; it talked and we listened, captivated by its spirit. And this cathedral in the pines overlooking the lake that held the bright white path of the sun was god.

The wind, the light, and the balsams told us to look further than ourselves with the same strength and power with which its message weaved its way through us. It fed my spirit — a spirit on the cusp of an adolescent awareness that ruins us for a while, until we push through the questions, the tests, of ourselves, our parents, society — the why of every single thing. This was before that time when every little detail of my life had to make sense. It was before the time that I didn’t listen to the wind every day. A time before I couldn’t feel because I could only question.

Here it is again. Telling me that I was always free. I never needed to leave that bench in the woods. But I did. And whether it is on the 20th floor of an apartment in KL, a busy street in Ho Chi Minh City, a Temple in Cambodia, a scorching Tampico beach where only the fishermen go, whether it’s in a city where masked men point semi-automatics over the roof of a pickup truck becomes a matter of landscape; or in a mosque by the river, this New England wind will always remind me of the power and privilege of my freedom.

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Time journey

Flying into dawn from Boston to Istanbul

Every time I turn the time on my Walmart watch from Mexico the winder falls out. Nevertheless, I always adjust the time forward or back the minute I get on the plane. I try to trick my body into thinking that it hasn’t lost a day during the journey from Boston to Kuala Lumpur.

Breaking Fast

Breaking Fast

When I arrived in Istanbul after the first leg of my 24-hour flight, I was ready to use my 10-hour layover for a small adventure into the city. In cases such as these, my strategy is to latch onto someone who looks like she or he knows where she is going. My first two attempts ran into language barriers and Turkish brusqueness. Then I scored! The woman was German. The man was Turkish, turned German at an early age. They took me to the Blue Mosque on the tram. I arrived an hour before the breaking of fast on the first day of Ramadan. There were miles of people crammed at plastic tables in the square waiting for the sun to sink behind the mosque, and the call to prayer to bellow across the city.

But it is not Monsoon Season.

Istanbul

The next morning, unbeknownst to all of us on that peaceful sunlit evening, a Kurdish Militant Group bombed an area just a few tram stops away. When I posted my near miss on Facebook, a concerned friend asked if my quest was necessary. Absolutely. I answer that without hesitation. Perhaps I put myself at risk by living in northern Mexico, venturing into Istanbul, traveling the world alone, or living in a country on the other side of the world, but I have managed to skirt the ugliness of the world, the civil unrest, the warring factions, people desperate enough to believe that a suicide bomb will solve their problems. The militant group that bombed Istanbul, explicitly told foreigners to stay away, because they are at war. Does that mean that we stay away? Last night a woman warned me to beware of the monsoon winds when I travelled by boat to Pulau Perhentian Kecil. But it is not monsoon season. Do we let ourselves be governed by fear, or do we govern it?

Belting out Shakespeare

In all of my years as a teacher, the students who succeeded in class were the ones who took risks. They are the ones, who despite their 25 other classmates, belted out a line of Shakespeare; they were the ones who dared to write a letter to a school board member whom they did not know. They dared to do something uncomfortable, to push the envelope. They were not the ones who snarled resentfully at a challenge, or stared idly out the window wishing they were somewhere else. They took a bite knowing that they could fail. And no matter the result, they gained knowledge about themselves and the world.

The voice of fear

My curiosity feeds me; it tells me to go forward. Every once in a while my fear-voice tells me that I am doing this all wrong, that I need to be in my house in Peterborough, making enough money to pay for its leaks and creaks. This voice tells me that I don’t have a plan for when I am too old to take care of myself. This is the voice that tells me to worry about a future I cannot control.

Do you have a plan?

The 11 people who died in Istanbul had no idea what would hit them the next day after they broke the Ramadan fast. Perhaps I brushed by one of them as I nosed about their beautiful city. Did they have a plan? While I am healthy, while I have the ability to move my body up a mountain, swim to Hancock from the Nelson landing on Lake Nubinuset, and the wherewithal to reach out to someone who will help me in a foreign city, I am going for it.